A Letter from Yvonne Rainer

Author(s): Yvonne Rainer

Source: October, Vol. 10 (Autumn, 1979), pp. 131-132
Published by: MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778633
Accessed: 04-01-2016 18:34 UTC

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 A LetterfromYvonne Rainer

To the Editors:
I findit necessaryto correctcertainimpressionsthatmay have resultedfrom
the advance publication of segments of my filmscript,"JourneysFrom Ber-
lin/1971," in October9. As of thedate of thiswriting,Sept. 10, 1979,thefilmhas
been shotand is being edited.When I submittedthescriptto October,sometimein
early spring, although the main body of the filmhad not yet been shot, I had
reason to believe thattherewould be no further revisionsofany importancein the
text. How wrong I was can be measured by comparing the opening titlesas
published with the latest,and hopefullyfinal,revision:
Let's begin somewhere:
In 1950a draftfora political criminallaw in theFederalRepublic
of Germany contained the following sentence: "The danger to the
communitycomes fromorganizedpeople."
In the interveningmonthsI underwenta quite radical shiftin my sense of
priorities with regard to how Germany would be "presented" in this film.
PreviouslyI thoughtI had a plentitudeof reasons forkeeping mydistancefrom
the "German question." Afterall, thefilmwas not going to be an analysisofwhy
political violence occurredin West Germanywhen it did, and afterall myworkis
more or less autobiographical, isn't it, and Germany is not my country,and
besides,mostof theinformationavailable to me in English was hearsayor,worse
yet,in the styleof Time magazine condescension. Well, yes, I did have direct
contact with a few victimsof police harassmentand surveillancetacticswhen I
was living in Berlin;in factthewoman whose apartmentI rentedhad fallenunder
the Berufsverbot and was forcedto findwork outside of the countryin orderto
continue her profession;but, yes, I had mentionedsome of these thingsin the
film.Hedging aside, I felta caution. Insofaras thereasonsfortheemergenceof the
Baader-Meinhofpeople and the RAF (Red ArmyFaction) did not seem centralto
the concerns of the film,I could convenientlyevade entanglementwith what
mightafterall be "nothing more" than a prolonged McCarthyera. And, forthe
same reason, I didn't see how the realityof the situation could be accurately
conveyedin the space I was willing to allot to it in thisparticularwork.And, of
course, the old dichotobearsof formand content,artand politics werecooking-
and continue to cook-my porridgejust like that of a lot of otherpeople these
days, in many cases compounding the problemof political analysis.
But then a book came into my hands that changed all that: Sebastian
Cobler's Law, Order,and Politics in WestGermany(Penguin, 1978).This book is
a meticulous,obsessed,painstakingdocumentation-by wayofendlessquoting of
constitutional amendments and public utterancesby police and government
officials-of the augmentationof police and militarypowers, the perfectingof
surveillance techniques, the growing influence of police "experts" on criminal
legislation, and the consequent constriction and elimination of civil rights. It
describes a situation in which social conflicts have since the end of World War II

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132

been consistently"translatedinto the practical logic of permanent,latentthreats

and dangers" to the State. So what else is new? Two thingswerenew to me: One
was theindisputableproofof the extentto which botha climateofrepressionand
outrightanti-libertarianlegislationpredatedtheeventsof,and following,1968,a
relationshipthe liberal press in Americahas always concealed by playing up the
Baader-Meinhofviolence and subsequent moves by the German government.
And the other new thing was the language, the language in which the
curtailmentsof civil libertyhave been recommendedand broughtinto law in West
Germany.It is indeed a language of technocrats,as Hans Magnus Enzensberger
points out in his revealingpiece on Germanyin thesame issue of October,forthe
police are a new breed of academically trained "scientist." But even more
horrifyingto me is the combination of a technocratic"detachment"with an
Orwellian double-bindreligiosity.The termStateappears everywhere. The State
has supplanted God. The State is absolute, unchanging, sacrosanct,apart.
Th.e
evidence for this impression is overwhelming,and in its light one can readily
unmask the lie containedin thevicious tautology"The dangerto thecommunity
comes fromorganizedpeople." Decoded, it says, "The danger to the Statecomes
fromthe community,and the communityis, by definition,people under suspi-
cion."
One finalexample frommy revisionof "JourneysFrom Berlin/1971"is in
order.The filmcloses with crawling titles:
The aim of all enemies of the State is the deliberatecreation of an
opposing power overand against thisState,or thedenial of theState's
monopoly of force.
-H. Herold, head of the Federal
Criminal InvestigationBureau
(BKA), 1975 (italics added)
Yvonne Rainer
Cambridge,Mass.

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